"Poetry is the most direct and simple means of expressing oneself in word."
Memory of Moving
by Lola Akinsola
Trucks and cars riding by,
it's a new place I'm going to, goodbye..
New York so long
why the sad songs...
playing in my car
moving...to a place oh so far.
Well two hours away
but that's still not okay,
well I'm going to be coming back and forth from Pennsylvania to New York still anyway.
I guess it'll be okay, but if I only had one thing to say,
It would just be..."what a day."
My Ode, A Model
by Lola Akinsola
The models you see on tv can't be me
I'm no model
and if I was,
I would be the mushy apple nobody really wants to pick up.
Not saying bad things about me
I just don't see how I could be...
a model..?
The Sonnet, The Dreaded Assignment
by Lola Akinsola
He knows his dressing is not up to par.
If Dressing was a hike up a mountain,
from the top, he would be so very far.
From his feet to his head from his head to
his feet, His style is oh so very weak.
I am putting on a facade right now.
I can't stand poetry, I don't know how,...
to write it. Did that even rhyme right there?
It's not fair, how people are poets here...
sort of. Well they are better than me, bet?
I feel like I have no imaginayy...
shon?. I tried to fit ten syllables and hey,
it ALMOST worked for me don't you think so?
No, not at all really that was bad yo.
My poetry is whatever I’m thinking
at the moment. I just write everything and anything down. For example, in “The
Sonnet, The Dreaded Assignment”, I started off talking about a boy with a bad
sense of fashion. I started to run out of things to say and the next thing that
came to mind was how bad I am at poetry. I got angry and started to write down
everything in my head. I later changed it because I found a less angry way to
express how I felt. I made sure the poem showed my frustration with writing
poetry though. The syllables were off also, so I had to edit that. My style of
poetry are free write poems because I don’t really have a mind full of
metaphors and similes and things like that so I just write down what’s in my
head and try to make it sound like a poem because once again, I suck at poetry.
I try to force rhymes but it doesn’t work most of the time. My poetry is the
type of poetry you just know I’m doing it because it is an assignment.
Eating Poetry
by Mark Strand
Ink runs from the corners of my mouth.
There is no happiness like mine.
I have been eating poetry.
The librarian does not believe what she sees.
Her eyes are sad
and she walks with her hands in her dress.
The poems are gone.
The light is dim.
The dogs are on the basement stairs and coming up.
Their eyeballs roll,
their blond legs burn like brush.
The poor librarian begins to stamp her feet and weep.
She does not understand.
When I get on my knees and lick her hand,
she screams.
I am a new man.
I snarl at her and bark.
I romp with joy in the bookish dark.
Man and Camel
by Mark Strand
On the eve of my fortieth birthday
I sat on the porch having a smoke
when out of the blue a man and a camel
happened by. Neither uttered a sound
at first, but as they drifted up the street
and out of town the two of them began to sing.
Yet what they sang is still a mystery to me—
the words were indistinct and the tune
too ornamental to recall. Into the desert
they went and as they went their voices
rose as one above the sifting sound
of windblown sand. The wonder of their singing,
its elusive blend of man and camel, seemed
an ideal image for all uncommon couples.
Was this the night that I had waited for
so long? I wanted to believe it was,
but just as they were vanishing, the man
and camel ceased to sing, and galloped
back to town. They stood before my porch,
staring up at me with beady eyes, and said:
"You ruined it. You ruined it forever."
My Mother on an Evening in Late Summer
by Mark Strand
My mother will go indoors
and the fields, the bare stones
will drift in peace, small creatures --
the mouse and the swift -- will sleep
at opposite ends of the house.
Only the cricket will be up,
repeating its one shrill note
to the rotten boards of the porch,
to the rusted screens, to the air, to the rimless dark,
to the sea that keeps to itself.
Why should my mother awake?
The earth is not yet a garden
about to be turned. The stars
are not yet bells that ring
at night for the lost.
It is much too late.
The poem “Eating Poetry” by Mark Strand is describing him getting rid of poetry and how people would suffer from the abstinence of it. "When I get on my knees and lick her hand, she screams." In this line the author is saying that the librarian was surprised to be presented with a sign of poetry when it seemed like all hope was lost. The author’s writing style is more like a story in poem form. He has words in his poems that make them seem like poems and not just a story written as a poem. For example in “My Mother on an Evening in Late Summer” he used all types of personification, metaphors, and similes. “to the sea that keeps to itself.” In this line the author is using personification. The author is trying to explain how calm the sea is so he says that the sea keeps to itself as a person would keep to himself or herself, which is an act of being calm and cool. This line rhymes with no other lines in the poem. It shows that the author free writes yet he uses descriptive language to make the poems actually sound like poems. Another example of this type of writing is in the poem “Man and Camel” by Mark Strand. “but just as they were vanishing, the man…” This line is using a metaphor for the man and the camel getting farther and father away. This line also doesn’t rhyme with any other line in the poem and this poem was basically a story written with a lot of descriptive words, which made it sound like a poem. This is just like the rest of his poems.
"Poetry is the most direct and simple means of expressing oneself in word."
The poem “Eating Poetry” by Mark Strand is describing him getting rid of poetry and how people would suffer from the abstinence of it. "When I get on my knees and lick her hand, she screams." In this line the author is saying that the librarian was surprised to be presented with a sign of poetry when it seemed like all hope was lost. The author’s writing style is more like a story in poem form. He has words in his poems that make them seem like poems and not just a story written as a poem. For example in “My Mother on an Evening in Late Summer” he used all types of personification, metaphors, and similes. “to the sea that keeps to itself.” In this line the author is using personification. The author is trying to explain how calm the sea is so he says that the sea keeps to itself as a person would keep to himself or herself, which is an act of being calm and cool. This line rhymes with no other lines in the poem. It shows that the author free writes yet he uses descriptive language to make the poems actually sound like poems. Another example of this type of writing is in the poem “Man and Camel” by Mark Strand. “but just as they were vanishing, the man…” This line is using a metaphor for the man and the camel getting farther and father away. This line also doesn’t rhyme with any other line in the poem and this poem was basically a story written with a lot of descriptive words, which made it sound like a poem. This is just like the rest of his poems.